Hiding is fruitless.

Too often we all attempt to hide behind pride, religious practice, judgment, success, self-sufficiency, etc.  The purpose of our hiding is based in our desire to prove ourselves worthy of God and his love.  Further, I think its purpose is based in comparison.  At least it is for me.

Often I find myself much more concerned with what others think, maybe even so much so that I never get around to caring what God thinks.  Lately, the evil of comparison has reared its ugly head.  It is paralyzing for me.

It wasn’t until I was once again in a chair sitting across from a counselor to help me navigate through this tough season did the truth come out.  I thought I was there to deal with my addictions, my past, my pain, confusion, career decisions, or anything other than comparison.  But not too long into my first session with this new counselor he called me on it and it pissed me off.  I don’t think of myself as a person that cares too much about what others think.

But as he has unpacked the issue I am clearly wrapped up in the downward spirals of comparison.

Hiding is fruitless.  Comparison is fruitless.

It’s true.  I am a comparer (is that even a word?)!  And my confidence and self-esteem have suffered for it.  It snuck in before I realized it and set its roots deep into the soil of my psyche and heart.  I am left feeling “less than” and empty because of it.  It has robbed me of peace and joy.  It has caused me to withdraw and try to hide.  It has riddled my thoughts with the resounding phrases – “if they only knew…” and “what will they think?” and “if only I had…” and “if only I could be…”

Honestly for a long time I had a lot of freedom from comparison.  But about 2 years ago I think it came slinking back in.  Why?  Well, I think it was able to get back in because of the loss of my job, the resulting bankruptcy and losing my home.  There was a crack in my resolve after that.  Also, over the past 2 years I have really begun to share my story of addictions, abuse, sexual issues, etc. and this left me more exposed and gave an in for self-doubt and questions about what people are thinking of me now they know my back story.

Truth be told – comparison never changed the truth of who I am, what I have done, etc.  Therefore, it had no purpose other than to deplete me and pull my focus off of Christ and my value in Him.

Comparison is the opposite of growth.  Growth sees a deficiency and moves a person toward a better position in that area, deeper dependency on Christ.  Comparison just leaves you sitting in a pool of pity and self-doubt.

So for now I am acknowledging the truth:  Hiding is fruitless.  Comparison is fruitless.  I am a comparer.   I have believed my value is based in something other than my position in Christ.

But the following is also true:  I want to change this.  I will change this by moving toward God and his truth instead of toward others through comparison.

Often I limit the power of truth in my life.  I tether truth to things and circumstances, only allowing truth to speak to those certain things.  I say that this truth can’t possibly be true beyond this limited hope or dream of mine.  I choose to limit truth and therefore the grasp of truth in my life often remains weak.

In my life, this looks like me trying to control my life and career in the tight confines of success as I define it.  I literally can choke my talent and opportunities while trying to force some standard of success into alignment with what I think is best.  All the while, life and true success were passing me by.

God looks to the condition of our hearts.

Therefore, I can’t help but believe that he measures success based on the condition of our hearts as well.

Recently in a conversation with my friend, Roger, I came to realize that God is likely much more proud of me for becoming real and honest with my story and circumstances in the past few years than he would ever be with me for reaching some silly financial goal/dream, especially if it was at the expense of my story and the condition of my heart.  And just maybe he used the financial circumstances I endured since 2011 to aid in bringing my heart more into alignment with his own in order to remove the idol which was hindering me from attaining a much bigger dream for myself.

I am now coming to a point where I am seeing 2011 as a time where God intervened to help me escape the confines of my own views of success to realign my gaze up to him and the more lofty possibilities of success based in Christ and his will for my heart, my life.

It is as though he took my views of success and stripped them away so I could see and experience joy and peace in the midst of my financial crisis, the death of my dream.  Therefore, bringing me to a point where I could see my life as being more about the story of what God has done, is doing and will do in my life and less about what silly things I think I can do with my own dreams.

How have you, or do you, limit the power of truth in your life?  Where do you need to allow for expanding the grasp of truth in your life?

Giraffes aren’t tall for no reason – they are tall so they can reach the vegetation high in the trees.

However, there is another very important purpose to their height – they serve as lookout for themselves and all the other animals around them.

When traveling in Africa on safari and hunting I quickly realized the purpose of giraffes.  My hunting guide, Hennie, explained to me that when giraffes are around it is hard to get close enough to the animals you are hunting.

Why not?  He said, “The giraffes alert all the other animals in the bush to you and they run.  Then all the other wildlife immediately take their cue from the giraffes and take off as well.”

This was a new idea for me.  I found it fascinating.  As I thought more and more about it I realized how great it would be to have this same concept in my own life.

How do we find Giraffes in our own lives?

In our own lives we should try to use the wisdom innate to the animal kingdom and search out the giraffes in our lives.

We can do this by searching out spiritual elders and those that have completed the journey ahead of us and watch/listen to them.  When they see trouble or predators approaching and they say run – RUN!

Why is it important to watch the giraffes?  We must appreciate and trust that they can see things from a perspective that we can’t.  They are able to see trouble approaching before we can even begin to see it and therefore we must submit to their vision, wisdom and perspective.

In my own life, I have found some people to serve as giraffes and have decided to stay close to them and let them watch over me and speak into my life.  It is hard to submit to their wisdom at times because like many others, I often think I know what is best for myself.  However, these people have proven themselves and helped protect me from danger on numerous occasions.

Do you have giraffes in your life?  If not, do you know anyone that could serve in that role for you?  I promise you won’t regret it if you find people to be this for you!

Louie Giglio is the founder of the Passion movement and has a team of amazing people around him pushing for justice in today’s world – specifically by getting the voices of the college generation to join together and demand change – and change is being ushered in!

This year the conference specifically focused on raising awareness regarding modern-day slavery and the 27 million slaves that are in slavery today!

There are more slaves today than at any other point in history!

This fact is overwhelming and unbelievable to me.  This should not be OK to any person, any religion, any culture, any government, etc.  This must change and the END IT MOVEMENT’s whole purpose is to do just that – to end modern-day slavery in our lifetimes.

Not only is it possible – it is essential!

One of the main purposes of this Conference was to ask people to pledge to help end slavery… and END IT NOW!!!

I did some creative work/installations for the conference.  One day while working on the string art installations for the Passion Conference and the End It Movement, I was overwhelmed with a thought that really took me aback.

If we’re going to ask those men and women that are victimizing people and selling them into sexual slavery or those people who are utilizing the services of sexual slaves to stop and treat these precious people with the dignity and respect they deserve – we must be willing ourselves to hold ourselves to a higher standard in regards to our own sexual activity and beliefs.

We must lead the way in standing up to claim sexual freedom for ourselves, our partners and all those around us.  We must work to set better boundaries in our own lives to ensure that the same dignity and respect we are demanding for those in sexual slavery be given to ourselves.

We can no longer victimize ourselves or others.  We as a people cannot continue to be participants in the sexualization of women (and men) in our culture and society.  We can no longer ask our partners, our girlfriends and boyfriends to be the objects of our sexual desires outside the proper/healthy bounds of what was intended.  We should not continue to objectify those we encounter in our lives or even online on the millions of porn websites.

By doing any of these things we are aiding in others being sexually victimized and even placing people in the bondage of sexual sin (its very own kind of slavery).

I know this is all much different from the actual slaves that the PASSION Conference and the END IT MOVEMENT is specifically focusing on… however, would we have a much better foundation to stand on in the fight against slavery if we ourselves aren’t ridding ourselves of any and all forms of any such victimization (intentional or not) in our very own lives?

Can we ask others to treat people with the respect and dignity they deserve if we are not doing the same for the people we encounter in our own lives?

Maybe the problem of modern-day slavery is really just a result of what is in our own hearts and the hearts of cultures and societies all over.

If a society doesn’t have skewed views of sexuality and the true rights and dignity afforded to each human then that same society would never allow sexual slavery to exist within their society.

Sexual slavery (or any kind of slavery) exists because we as a society, a culture, a nation, a global community possess skewed views and beliefs about the true value of human life and the dignity and respect that should be afforded them.

If we as a society believe that it is alright to objectify and sexualize people in the media and in public then we can’t be surprised when individuals are objectified and sexualized in the dark corners of our society through sexual slavery.

The end of modern slavery does not necessarily start with freeing slaves – it begins with a change in our own hearts about calling ourselves (including society as a whole) to much higher standards than we are currently being told are alright through the media and public opinion.

You want to see modern-day slavery end?  Then start with ending the bondage (slavery) in your own life and actions first!  END IT NOW!

Do that and slaves all across this world will begin to be freed!

YOU want to be in it to end it?  Click here to take the END IT Movement pledge and give your support!

It seems the resistance is often based on the premise that they don’t want to go back and relive any pain and be forced to experience some awful thing all over again.  Further assuming that they have left this pain in the past and are no longer connected to it.  But the truth is that healing isn’t really about returning to the point of pain. 

Healing is about finally leaving the point of pain.

I lived much of my life thinking I had left my points of pain in the past and that I had escaped them.  Yet, over time I came to realize that I was still plagued by those points in my life.  When I think about it now, it angers me that I had been fooled into thinking that I was ok and had escaped the pain of my past.  I feel like time had been wasted.

The healing process opened my eyes and showed me that I had been camped out right on top of my point of pain the entire time.  I began to see that the pain that one experiences in the healing process is not as much the pain of dealing with the point of pain in a person’s life but more likely the pain of leaving a place in which a person has grown accustomed.  The pain one senses during this process is actually more of an encounter with fear than pain.

Fear is often confused with pain.  So in the healing process we over-emphasize the pain associated with an event or circumstance in our past and de-emphasize, or completely fail to recognize, the pain (or fear more than likely) associated with moving forward into unchartered space – the unknown.

Healing away from pain is a movement into new spaces – spaces where we are forced to trust God will show up and meet us there.  Trust that we can survive and exist apart from what we are used to in our lives.

When we remain at our point of pain we are familiar with the landscape of that space and know how to navigate those surroundings – no matter how bad that space may be.  Healing draws us away to new spaces, new terrain, and into places we are unsure of and unable to know for certain what it will be like for us.  There it is.  Do you see it?  FEAR.  We are more scared of whether healing will happen and if it does what will life be like afterwards than we are scared of facing our point of pain and how that may feel.

Healing away from pain = facing our fear as fear and being willing to experience pain if necessary in order to see what may be possible after healing.

Can you see a point of pain you are camped out at but thought you had left?  Are you willing to face your fear and face pain in order to experience life after healing?

Most people don’t realize that they have an option amidst hard times, and rather go on assuming that hard times must equal being overwhelmed.  The option is often not clear to the person in the middle of hard times.  I would venture to say that the option to choose to quiet one’s mind may always be hard no matter how many times you do it - it goes against the thrust of the circumstances thrown at a person during hard times.

In hard times, my tendency is to get caught up in my struggles, the resulting mental noise and the drama related to my circumstances.

The past couple years have been treacherous for me.  I might even say that 2011 was the worst year of my life.  I have been in what seems to be an endless attack from all angles.  I have been stripped of so many things in my life over the past couple years.  Which has been:

Hard.
Overwhelming.
Painful.
Confusing.
Exhausting.

Yet, in the hard times of the past couple years I could also say that I experienced more peace and joy than ever before.  Strange but more true than I could even begin to put into words!

How can this be?  You ask.

Well, over the past couple years, I have personally learned (and I am still learning) that in hard times, when being stripped of everything, a person gets to a point where they are quiet enough to hear God’s voice.  I believe this quietness comes via a choice to bend into God and let him quiet your mind amidst struggles and painful circumstances.

But why would we bend into God in hard times?  Especially if He could have routed us around the hard times.  That doesn’t seem like the kind of God anyone would want to know better.

Why?  Because God knows how we are—He made us this way.  He knows we are more receptive to tenderness than ferocity.  So He whispers.  And actually I’m not so sure He orders the hard times, but I do believe He at least uses them to strip us down and remove the noise of life and the mind – increasing the chances we can actually hear His tender whispers.

In hard times, God knows we’ll remember when He whispers and we actually have enough silence to hear.

Can you see why I might have had more peace and joy in the hard times of the past couple years?

I believe it was because enough silence finally began to develop in my life that I could finally clearly hear God, sense God, and feel God.  So the hard times were merely tools used to develop silence in my life – not to punish me or out of God’s indifference toward my plight.  You see, through the silence that came through and in hard times, God opened me up to better hear and experience Him – knowing that as a result I would find more peace and joy in my life… IN HIM.

So isn’t that exactly the kind of God you would want to know better?  A God that pursued you and created the opportunity for you to experience peace and joy – even in hard times.

I have taken many self-help moves in my days in order to improve myself and find healing in my mind and soul.

In the past several months I have began to be convicted that my tendency is to move toward self-help measures before I move toward God to seek help and strength.  I am not saying that there aren’t times to utilize things characterized as “self-help” as I do think they have value and purpose.  I am just now starting to see that their truest value comes when seeking God first and asking his help and wisdom as we move toward his grace and healing – which may come through those self-help measures.

Unfortunately, I see that the church has taken on the self-help mentality and passed it along to its members, even me.  I believe that this has been done with good intentions but even the purest of gifts can be put above the GIFT-Giver and therefore, lose the gift’s truest purpose – to draw us nearer to God in all things we encounter.  The church and its people should desire that we all grow, be healed and become more aware of ourselves (as creations of God).  However, those things should never be pursued without a mind toward God, His will for us and the process He has for the same.

The Christian walk is not, and should not be, about self-help measures alone - as Christ did not come to help us control or manage our shortcomings, our sin.  He came to eliminate and eradicate sin and it’s power over us.  And he doesn’t need any “help” from us in that matter.  Further, it could be viewed as sinful to seek self-help first, as opposed to seeking God first.

I believe that Jesus came to eradicate sin and it’s power over us in order to draw us into deep relationship with him and father God.  Sin, by its definition, is the opposite of movement toward God; yet, it is a movement away from God and toward self.

I’ve believed in self-help for too long; even if I may have gotten a tad bit “better” – but not really because no amount of my own power in self-help has drawn me closer to God. You see self-help has done nothing to move me away from myself and self-focus.  It surely hasn’t drawn me toward Christ and a Christ-centered focus.  Why not?  Well, it merely caused me to look inward at myself and my desires for change.  Yet, at times I did experience certain traditional “self-help” measures that drew me toward Christ – yet those were times when He was working to lead me into and through those – and giving me the strength to do so.  Not of my own decision and/or strength.

Are you seeking self-help measures without a mind toward God and His power to bring change, growth and healing to you?  Maybe you could try to seek God first in one of those areas in your life and see how He handles it, and you, as you seek His help above your own “self-help.” 

I dare to you to try it once and just see how things go!  Will you?

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is, as you would imagine, a hard and arduous process.

Looking back at 2011 I can see God’s touches all over it.  I can see his grace and love, while at the same time I see his correction and discipline as well.  I am forced to see that he has been stripping my idols away from me.  Mainly my idols of pleasure and comfort.

I have for years held pleasure and comfort very high.  I have adjusted many aspects of my life and integrity at times to achieve and keep pleasure and comfort close to my side.  These two things shaded my view of the world, others and God.  However, God has placed me through fires to refine me and to bring these idols (impurities) to the surface.

At times I believed that not having pleasure and comfort in my life would be disastrous.  Yet, in reality and truth, having the idols of pleasure and comfort above God has been the most destructive force in my life to date.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable has actually been a joyous process as God has revealed a deeper sense of pleasure and comfort in him.  In the midst of the process of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable I couldn’t necessarily see it but now I can.  I feel less hindered and more free than I ever dreamt of in the days of bowing to pleasure and comfort in my own way.  Having God move toward his rightful place in my life is hard but offers me something so much more than pleasure and comfort ever did, or ever could.

It offered me peace beyond understanding and joy in the midst of pain and heartache.

So what I viewed as punishment just a few short months ago, I now see as a great and loving gift.  God lovingly stripped me down and emptied me so in turn he could fill me up in ways beyond description.  As I am gaining wisdom little by little I am beginning to see the absurdity of putting anything above God in my life.

Are you comfortable with the uncomfortable in your life?  If you’re not sure, ask God and then watch as he shows you!  It’s hard but oh so very worth it!

During the interview he was talking about the pain of accumulated secrets and the devastating impact they can have on a person’s life.  He spoke of his own history with the damaging power of secrets and it reminded me of my own fight with the same.

Accumulated secrets work to eat away at a person over time so as to leave them as a mere fragment of themself.

I know that from my own experience that the secrets I kept for years ended up leaving me destitute and empty.  I felt very much like this picture. 

I stuffed the secrets away in an attempt to keep people from knowing the real me and the real truth of my story.  I hid for so long that I eventually had to lose myself in order to keep the charade going.  It wasn’t until I was just a fragile shell of a person (empty of God’s design for me and full of pain, shame and hatred of self) did I find that I had to make a radical decision.

The accumulated secrets must be revealed in order to change to come. 

I began to release them one by one at first and then in droves as I began to realize the healing power of releasing my accumulated secrets.  Where once, secrets festered in the dark parts of my heart, light began to shine and bring growth to places previously laid barren.

Accumulated secrets are like dark storm clouds covering fertile soil.  No matter how fertile the soil of your heart, with secrets blocking out the light very little can grow and certainly can’t thrive.

Even today I still fight to keep from accumulating secrets.  I have put a tight-knit group of accountability around me and requested that they ask me poignant questions on a regular basis so as to force me to be faced with the decision of whether to hold onto a secret or release it through accountability and confession.  Having people in your life to call you into a space of honesty isn’t the end-all-be-all as the ultimate decision still rests with the individual.  However, being faced with hard questions on a regular basis makes the decision of whether to bring forth your secrets in honesty or to hoard them away a conscious decision – not just one that you make without realizing it.

Do you have accumulated secrets that need to be released?  Has holding onto your secrets and refusing the light of honesty made you more of who God has made you to be?  Or have you found yourself wasting away as a result?

Will you join me in releasing secrets and allowing truth to bring light in?

You see, 2011 was not my best year to say the least!

But don’t worry, I am not going to go into a self-pitying diatribe on my 2011.  Why not?  Well, I must say that even though 2011 was probably one of the hardest years of my life – it was also one of the most rewarding and so full of joy and peace amidst the storms that raged around me.

But even still, I did have doubts and fears bubbling from beneath the surface at times as well.  I lost sight of the joy and peace available to me at many times as well.  It was like no matter how hard I tried to stay in the middle of God’s available joy and peace, I kept sinking back into fear and anxiety at times.

One of my dreams seemed to die in 2011.  Through the times of financial crisis I endured in 2011 (or as I like to call it “the crisis of my idol”), I often found myself feeling like a failure, like my dream of financial success had been crippled.  I looked at my circumstances and felt “less than” at times, especially when I would compare myself to others around me that were not dealing with financial failure as I was.  Then fear and anxiety would work very hard to pull me into its grip and drown me in its shame.

But I knew the truth.  I knew God was at work in my life and I knew he was purifying me all throughout 2011. 

Yet, truth only goes as far as how deeply you believe in it. 

It was not until a recent conversation with my great friend, Roger, that I heard the real truth which I needed to realign myself with at every level.  In this conversation, I saw a glimpse of the issue in my life which was bigger than the circumstances of my life – the supposed death of my dream.

God’s definition of success is in no way tied to the world’s definition of success.  He views us singularly and in our entirety and not as a series of numbers on a financial statement and certainly not as a person ranked against his other children.  His sovereignty in and over our lives is not tied to any sort of pride or need for approval.

You see, I was defining my success by the measure of the world and others around me and setting my dreams for myself accordingly.  I viewed my success as a dollar value and ranking.  I dreamed of certain levels of financial success and since I was not attaining those then I believed I must have failed. 

Yet, my dreams of self-aggrandizement were likely not in alignment with God’s plans for me nor his TRUTH.  Therefore, my missing the mark in regards to my goals and dreams weren’t really failures but maybe they were more like realignments along the route to God’s own plans of success for me.

God looks to the condition of our hearts.  Therefore, I can’t help but believe that he measures success based on the condition of our hearts as well.  And in the conversation with my friend, Roger, I came to realize that God is likely much more proud of me for becoming real and honest with my story and circumstances in 2011 than he would ever be with me for reaching some silly financial goal/dream, especially if it was at the expense of my story and the condition of my heart.  And just maybe he used the financial circumstances I endured in 2011 to aid in bringing my heart more into alignment with his own in order to remove the idol which was hindering me from attaining a much bigger dream for myself.

I am now coming to a point where I am seeing 2011 as a year where God intervened to help me escape the confines of my own views of success to realign my gaze up to him and the more lofty possibilities of success based in Christ and his will for my heart, my life. 

It is as though he took my views of success and stripped them away so I could see and experience joy and peace in the midst of my financial crisis, the death of my dream.  Therefore, bringing me to a point where I could see my life as being more about the story of what God has done, is doing and will do in my life and less about what silly things I think I can do with my own dreams.

Real success – realignment. 

Real success is more about the escape from the confines of our small dreams and views of success and/or failures and realigning them into God’s views of success and our release of our stories for others to hear.

Are you dreaming based on truth?  Or are you confining yourself to dreams much smaller than God could dream for you?